Apple Inc.'s gold iPhone 5S is selling like hotcakes. For impatient customers wanting to skip the preorder queue (or cheapskates who want to save a few bucks), golden stickers offered by some smart Chinese merchants are a quick option.

Dozens of online stores are selling the golden handset stickers for iPhones in China, transforming models of other colors into the popular gold variety. The cost of this cheap makeover could be less than US$2 in some cases, according to postings on Alibaba's retailplatform taobao.com.

That's certainly much less than the amount that buyers will have to fork out for the iPhone 5S. And certainly no cause to sell one's kidney, as one store touted in its online advertisement.

'Dear, you don't need to sell your kidney for the new iPhone,' one of the ads said. 'Instead of paying 5288 yuan (the retail price of the 16-gigabyte iPhone 5S in China), you only need to spend 35 yuan to make your iPhone 5 look like a golden iPhone 5S in seconds.'

Thousands of the stickers have been sold through stores on taobao.com in less than a month, reflecting strong demand for the golden device in China. While most of the consumer reviews for the stickers are positive, some users complained about discrepancies in color and size.